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You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

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First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored).

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Once you’ve made your emergency kit, you should sit down with your family and come up with an emergency plan. This includes where you would go and who you would call if zombies started appearing outside your door step. You can also implement this plan if there is a flood, earthquake, or other emergency.

1. Identify the types of emergencies that are possible in your area. Besides a zombie apocalypse, this may include floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes. If you are unsure contact your local Red Cross chapter for more information.

I just emphasized the whole damn thing.

2. Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home… or your town evacuates because of a hurricane. Pick one place right outside your home for sudden emergencies and one place outside of your neighborhood in case you are unable to return home right away.

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3. Identify your emergency contacts. Make a list of local contacts like the police, fire department, and your local zombie response team. Also identify an out-of-state contact that you can call during an emergency to let the rest of your family know you are ok.

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4. Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast.

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If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas (I will be volunteering the young nameless disease detectives for the field work).

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Have you begun preparing for a zombie apocalypse? Or maybe you have been preparing for a more realistic threat like hurricanes or the next flu season? Tell us about what you are doing to prepare!

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So... did you catch the relatively obvious "sub"text here?

Kris is absolutely, 100% right. The CDC is using a pop-culture phenomenon to actually help people become better prepared in case of an actual emergency. It's pretty smart on the part of the CDC, actually. I know I would have paid a hell of a lot more attention to those safety lectures in grade school had they been talking about zombie outbreaks, vampire attacks, or werewolf attacks instead of real things.

In fact, I've seriously considered writing the CDC and telling them that maybe they need to take it to schools. I wonder how understanding of safety awareness would change if they utilized pop-culture phenomena in this way? Hell... release a realistic documentary. What would a zombie outbreak actually look like in real life, what would be its actual explanation, and how would we actually deal with it?

Although, I should point out that it's a rather sad fact of our current social climate that "the masses" would pay more attention to a lecture about how best to deal with a zombie outbreak as opposed to a real-life outbreak like the flu, or a flood.

As far as medicines... oh come on. Please don't be one of those Storm types. I'm begging you.

You and I both know they were talking about all medicines, not just frickin' Prozac. They were also talking about aspirin, advil, Tylenol, Allegra, Claritin, Excedrin, DayQuil, NyQuil, Pepto Bismol, and whatever else a person might take to ease allergies, pains, stomach issues, and so on. These are rather important things to keep on your person when you deal with long-term issues. I deal with a huge amount of environmental allergies, mainly hay fever (in short, I'm allergic to anything and everything that can effect the sinuses and set off the histamines). I pretty much cannot survive a day without an Allegra-D... in fact, without it, I will spend all day in my bed surrounded by tissue boxes, chicken soup (with Matzoh Balls... specifically the one made by Tabachnick... SO GOOD! [unless my mom makes some... that's the best]), and rapidly-filling garbage cans.

And finally... about your third point...

Good luck battling the zombie hoards. I'm pretty sure in the case of zombies or, say, a sudden release of wild, rabid, dogs, the best thing to do is stay the hell away and let the professionals take care of them. There's a reason we have professionals... they know what the hell they'redoing.